Colorado Springs, Colorado SperlingViews

"Looking into moving to this area..."

Hello! I was wondering if I can get an honest description of life in the CO Springs area...what does the community offer for families with children (mine are 6 and 9)? How is the weather? How are the neighborhoods and schools? Are the locals friendly and welcoming? Any info is appreciated! Thank you!

I used to feel pretty good about the winters here, I thought they were mild, and compared to Wisconsin where I previously lived they were. As I get older, now in my 60's, I am much less tolerant of snow and ice and cold and feel like it's time to find warmer climate.

As a life long resident of Colorado Springs I can't think of a better place to live if you enjoy outdoor activities including skiing, camping, hiking, hunting, biking, snow shoeing, or fishing. As part of the high plains desert climate we enjoy well over 300 days a year of sun shine and sit at the base of "America's Mountain", Pikes Peak.
There is, of course, the issue of altitude for those who are from other areas as the city is at an elevation of just over 6,200 feet and the climate is very dry with low humidity year round. Staying hydrated is essential and requires constant attention. It may be obvious to some, but this is not the place for those whose leisure time enjoyment revolves around the ocean, sailing, deep sea fishing or warm weather year round. It's a great place to live if you enjoy living at altitude!

This city has had significant growth during the last 14 years. Urban sprawl is everyhwere. Crime is on the increase. City severely lacking in mass transportation. Not enough parks or park space with the increase in persons moving to Colorado Springs. Significant and very polarizing politics have played havoc with city. Many citizens are wanting to move out including myself. Quality of life here is severly lacking. If you want culture you'll drive to Denver.

I've traveled all over the country for work and this is the overall favorite place I've ever been. The climate is amazing due to the altitude and lack of humidity. Don't take my word for it - go to a weather site and look at our averages throughout the year or come visit. I sit on the deck and watch mountain sunrises & sunsets nearly every day, even mid-winter. Pikes Peak, the 2nd most visited mountain in the world, is always beautiful. The water is incredibly pure and delicious - bottled water not needed here! We leave the door to the deck open all the time because there are no bugs. My family and I frequently head up into the mountainas or even to some of the huge parks and open spaces with bluffs, hiking trails & overlooks all within the city limits. The access to the foothills is as great as any city I've ever seen. If you want quality family activity (even FREE), this is the place to live. All the amenities of city living, yet access to places like Breckenridge. Our schools are generally decent and crime rates are decently low - you should google the stats to prove/disprove it. Of course there are worse areas of town but this is generally a clean city. Many military people retire to the Springs to raise their families, additionally making for an excellent community (I have no military involvement). Traffic here is as mild as any city I've been in, partially because the town is SO spread out. There's open land and parks everywhere. My 17 minute commute is so mild. Short story is Colorado Springs is everything my family hoped it would be. We will continue to travel elsewhere but continue coming home to here. Every weekend here can be a mini-vacation!

COS is nice place to live... fantastic climate. Though a multitude of school districts makes the city / county divided between great districts and not great. This mirrors factional community - military, old west, downtown progressives, evangelical.

The first thing everyone will notice is that it is a beautiful city full of nice tourist attractions. Once you start studying the city you will find a lot of diversity. It is a military town with the south side populated by Pawn shops and liquor stores (typical of military communities). However the central part of the city is somewhat Bohemian. The Northern end of the city is solid middle class.
The commute from point A to point B can be frustrating since this is a city of 460,000 people living in a city designed for 200,000.
Culturally you can find whatever you want from New Age Hippies to Ambitious Yuppies. Politically it leans a bit on the conservative side, but Independents are comfortably entrenched. Keep in mind that this is a military town, so if you feel threatened by anything military, you are not going to like C.S. otherwise it is a comfortable city.
For the Outdoors types you have it all within 2 hours drive. The Restaurants tend to be a bit overpriced and overrated, but the scenery makes up for the experience.

My family and I left here once for a few years living in Nevada. I cried with joy when we moved back. The water quality is good, the mountains are beautiful, especially Pikes Peak. It is affordable to live here, there are many school choices with open enrollment. There are many free and low cost things to do around town, and hiking in the Garden of the Gods is always fun. Most of the people here are friendly, and the traffic is not too bad, except on Friday night when I-25 slows down. Colorado Springs is the 2nd most requested military assignment, and many choose to retire here. There are bike trails, hiking trails, the Olympic Training Center and Sky Sox baseball. There are also many small theater groups around town, and the Pikes Peak Center is a fun place to go for concerts. When disaster strikes, like our recent fires, the outpouring of support from the community was amazing. It is a good place to raise kids.

I moved here to Colorado Springs 30 years ago. I consider this my home town. The people are friendly. But like any large city, of course you will find those who are not! The city is beautiful. The parks are numerous and well-kept. We have the best climate of any state I have visited and I've been to 47. The spring is breezy, sometimes windy because of the Chinooks that come off the mountain. Summer can be warm and dry. Fall is still warm with cool evenings. Winter is so much more pleasant than my birth place of MN. When I moved here it was a lot wetter with daily afternoon rains. We, like much of the country are in a drought now and that is unfortunate due to wildfire possibility.
If you consider relocating from a lower elevation you may have a period of adjustment of approximately 3 months. The city is large but quite spread out so it feels homey. It has grown a lot since I moved here. I am still hard-pressed to find a place I love like Colorado Springs. Everything I need is within 10 miles from my house. There are many subdivisions with shopping close to each one. The Pikes Peak range is beyond beautiful and I never tire of waking up and seeing it. It truly is amazing. The drivers can be a bit crazy. I believe this is due to the fact that they come from so many different states and countries. It is a popular place to visit and during tourist season can be quite busy. But there are certain areas that tourists tend to be and so neighborhoods and general areas of the city are not affected. I can't imagine a place I would rather be. I have looked out of curiosity and feel I found the best place.

This is one of the worse place I ever live in my life. I move here from Texas to get away from the bad crime and the very hot weather. Colorado Springs is a joke here the crimes are terrible and the people are rude and very bad here. Almost everywhere here has a bad customer service and very few good customer service. There are a few nice ones but get this the nice ones are not from Colorado Springs. Very very rude drivers here they ride on your bumper if you don't drive faster than the posted speed limits, they cut you off and give you a finger if you don't drive fast enough. I feel like I am the only one here following the driving laws and speed limits. These military people are very rude and stupid because they are and it not a joke. The air force people are nicer and smarter here but they are not all great. Working for any jobs here are horrible because of horrible bosses and my family works for them. I have been lucky with my job because I have a good manager but it's rare to find a job here with a good manager here. A lot of jobs don't pay very good here like the rest of the country. It's hard to really find a decent job here. They put crap on the roads to melt the snow and ice and it's ruining the paint job on my families cars so I have to use cleaner wax to clean that crap off but it's not prefect. I wish they find something else to put on the road that does not harm the paint. Denver is a little better place to live but I would not live in Colorado anymore soon. The winter is pretty long here and was got the last snow storm on April 23 and still no green leafs yet from trees and grass still yellow. Summer time here is wonderful here that the only thing I like here late spring,summer and early fall is really nice but winter is very cold and long. I like the mountains nearby and the things to do in the mountains but I hate this city but like other parts of Colorado. This summer I am moving to the pacific northwest where Portland or Seattle is. I have been doing tons of research on the pacific northwest area and it's a great place compare to Colorado. I have met six people here from Washington and Oregon here and they told me that they feel homesick here and ready to move back to pacific northwest soon and don't blame them I should have never move here and should have move straight to Oregon or Washington from Texas a year ago. I don't recommend Colorado springs there are much better towns in Colorado if you have lots of money and not have to work here.

I have something to say about Colorado Springs there is too many issue with this town. I mean no where is prefect but Colorado Springs can be better. The pros about this town, bike riding on trails there lots of trails, camping in nearby mountains, the weather is okay but it's would be nice if it's wasn't so damn windy like a tropical force wind but it's nothing I can do about it. Summer time is really nice not as windy and a lot cooler weather than Texas and Arizona. Nice mountains along the city. The cons are that the crimes are horrible. Terrible drivers here they drive so fast that I feel like I am the only one following the speed limit and obeying the driving laws. People here don't know how to yield and they cut you off and ride on your bumper and there's almost no police catching bad drivers well it's probably because they are so busy catching murderer and drug dealers and thief. But not so much traffic here that a nice thing. When there is snow and ice the city put this crap on the road here that reduce ice is ruining the paint job on the cars I notice that on my families cars and mine not very happy about the stuff they put on the road so I have to wax my car a lot to get rid of the stain and to protect the paint job. But it's help reduce accidents but wish they find something else. Too many rude military people and air force people and they have military brats here. Very few are nice but not many and they talk nasty and dirty I can't stand military people very much. The Colorado people are nicer but there a lot of former inmates living in Colorado springs because of large numbers of prisons in Colorado. That why the crimes are awful here. This summer I am done with this city and moving to Oregon because Oregon is a much better place with nicer people and lower crime and it's prettier in Oregon. Thought about Boise Idaho at first but leaning more towards Oregon. Can't wait to move out of Colorado springs. I would have stay here if things were much better and if there was more better jobs here but there nothing here that pays good. I should have move to Oregon from Texas and not even think about moving Colorado its was a mistake moving to Colorado Springs.

I have lived in this city since 1970. The street division is the worst! The only way this city steet division knows how to clear the streets of snow is DUMP MORE SAND! They never clean up the school routes. The sand lays on the streets for months and months and causes accidents. Especially within school zones!
Even when there is less than an inch of snow on the streets we get tons and tons of sand! They claim they clean it up. Well their managers must be smoking dope, our street rarely gets sweep!
Wish the EPA would come down on them hard!

I moved here from Denver in 2008 because my new husband was stationed here, and I can't WAIT for him to retire so we can move!! This city has so many problems, I can't begin to list them all: weather that is inhospitable 85% of the year; no snow plows; workers in all industries that are lazy, slow, expensive, and don't give two hoots about the quality of their workmanship; traffic cops every 10 feet with a speed gun but no cops if you need one at your house; drivers that move as slow as possible because they don't have anywhere to go that they care about (plus the cops might ticket them for going 3 mph over the limit!); roads throughout the city designed to slow people down and keep them from getting anywhere quickly; mediocrity at every turn from hotels to restaurants; antiquated traffic light technology - I could go on and on and in fact, have thought about writing a book about the poor quality of workmanship we have received with 98% of our business transactions. It is a fairly large city that wants to operate like a small town and it doesn't work. Either that or city officials want people to leave here as quickly as they came. If you have a choice, move somewhere else unless you like the truly "laid back" and lazy.

I was shocked to find out that apartments here charge your water bill the same accross the board whether there are 2 of you living in the apartment or 6. And believe me, there are a lot of ppl. co-habitating in bulk here. Oh, and yeah, my car insurance doubled!!!!! Crime is bad....usually several killings per day here and the jobs pay nothing. It's not THAT beautiful to get robbed legally every month.

I moved here in Colorado Springs back in Aug of 2012 and regret moving here, its was a little mistake moving here. Too many people here that are from the army,navy and other government type of job people here and most of them are very rude and have no respect. The true colorado people are much nicer. The people from other state with Texas license plate are the very rude drivers and other state too. The job markets here is a joke its hard to find a good job with high pay. There are job here that are available is just that its does,nt pay very good. My family and I have thought about moving to Boise Idaho for a long time and we should have move to Idaho but we thought that we check out colorado springs and see if we like it here or not and we are moving to Boise soon maybe later in 2013. The only thing I like about colorado is the mountains and there is a lot of things to do in the mountains like skiing,camping,bike riding and a lot of sight seeing. Aspen and Vail and some other small towns are very nice in the mountains. If you think about moving to Colorado Springs don't move to the springs because there is other better towns and cities in Colorado. The weather is great here in the summer fall and late springs but winter is very cold and some snow which I don't mind. I used to live in Texas and weather is awful in Texas so the weather is much better in colorado with less rain too. But very glad I moved out of Texas because its was the most boring place I ever live and hot and humid all the time. Part of colorado springs is very nice like the north and west part of town but central and south part of town is horrible with really bad crimes here and its freaking me out a little so I stay away from that area. Like I say we are moving to Boise Idaho because I have visit there before and the people are nice and nicer drivers and you can hang out in downtown Boise and not get rob or hurt there and there is mountains north of Boise and Oregon coast which I love is not far from Boise. I should have done better research on Colorado Spring because its not for me or to my familes here.